.

"What do I perceive tonight?"

"The Present as it is in the Eternal. Say no more. Come with me."

She stretched her hand and took mine with the assurance of a goddess,
and we went up the hall where the night had been deepest between the
great pillars.

Now it is very clear to me that in every land men, when the doors of
perception are opened, will see what we call the Supernatural clothed
in the image in which that country has accepted it. Blake, the mighty
mystic, will see the Angels of the Revelation, driving their terrible
way above Lambeth--it is not common nor unclean. The fisherman, plying
his coracle on the Thames will behold the consecration of the great new
Abbey of Westminster celebrated with mass and chant and awful lights
in the dead mid-noon of night by that Apostle who is the Rock of the
Church. Before him who wanders in Thessaly Pan will brush the dewy
lawns and slim-girt Artemis pursue the flying hart. In the pale gold of
Egyptian sands the heavy brows of Osiris crowned with the pshent will
brood above the seer and the veil of Isis tremble to the lifting. For
all this is the rhythm to which the souls of men are attuned and in that
vibration they will see, and no other, since in this the very mountains
and trees of the land are rooted. So here, where our remote ancestors
worshipped the Gods of Nature, we must needs stand before the Mystic
Mother of India, the divine daughter of the Himalaya.

How shall I describe the world we entered? The carvings upon the walls
had taken life--they had descended. It was a gathering of the dreams men
have dreamed here of the Gods, yet most real and actual. They watched in
a serenity that set them apart in an atmosphere of their own--forms of
indistinct majesty and august beauty, absolute, simple, and everlasting.
I saw them as one sees reflections in rippled water--no more. But
all faces turned to the place where now a green and flowering leafage
enshrined and partly hid the living Nature Goddess, as she listened to
a voice that was not dumb to me. I saw her face only in glimpses of an
indescribable sweetness, but an influence came from her presence like
the scent of rainy pine forests, the coolness that breathes from great
rivers, the passion of Spring when she breaks on the world with a wave
of flowers. Healing and life flowed from it. Understanding also. It
seemed I could interpret the very silence of the trees outside into the
expression of their inner life, t